While I was in Washington, D.C. for theCall, a gathering of youth and adults to fast and pray for our nation, the Lord impressed upon me that its easy to feel power, to feel the advantage when amongst a number of other believers but I need to recognize that even when its just me and Him against the world the advantage is mine. How can all the power in the universe ever begin to compare with the power of the one who created it. In my own strength I am weak but in God’s I am unstoppable. I began to realize and still am that even if it is just me and God against the world the advantage is ours, a huge advantage is ours, infinity to 1 the advantage is ours. Its nothing that I can do alone, its all God. The Channelsurfer’s in their song “Strength” say, “the only thing I had to do was believe, that a power so strong could live in me, not by my own but Christ who came through.” Not by our own strength but by Christ who lives in us, in his strength can we triumph. Quoting from Smith Wigglesworth, “If you are born of God, you are born of the power of the Word and not of man… you are born of power which exists in you, a power of which God took and made the world that you are in.” When we are saved God comes in. The Spirit of God abides in us. Omnipotent God is living inside of us have faith and do not doubt it. “For nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). In Jeremiah 1:10 God appoints the prophet “over nations and kingdoms to uproot and teardown, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.” This was not power Jeremiah had on his own but rather power God was moving through him. Jeremiah’s message of coming exile was strongly rejected but God gave him the strength to persevere through heavy opposition. Jeremiah 1:19 “They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you declares the Lord.” All it takes is God, in Him is the victory. As long as we have God we don’t need to worry about anything else, with God we can take the whole world. We need to sit down or rather stand up and realize that with God we have much more than we need to complete any task. In God’s strength nothing is too big, too difficult, to heavy to be moved. From dust God created a man. From nothing He created the universe. How much more can He do with you? To change the world, to see renewal all we must have is a willingness to obey, God will provide the rest.
First of all this letter is a great discourse on civil disobedience. Found below are some of the other thoughts I had in response to its reading.
In this letter Martin Luther King Jr. shows that he is upset at the ‘white moderate’ who he describes as being “more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice… lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” His comments were geared towards individuals who would rather keep the seeming ‘order’ of segregation than fight for integration and social equality. We cannot become more devoted to a false ‘order’ than to justice. We cannot conform to an order that runs contrary to the order of heaven, the kingdom of God. “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” Matt. 6:10. Rather than live for this world’s system let us look to the invisible kingdom. For all else will pass away but the Word of God will remain forever. And if our opposition to the ‘order’ causes tension, then let there be tension. And let the tension encourage us because we will know we are where we are supposed to be, there in the thick of the fight.
“I have wept over the laxity of the church… How we blemished and scarred [the body of Christ] through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists. There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society… Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were ‘a colony of heaven,’ called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be ‘astronomically intimidated’… Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound… But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.”
Its pretty self explanatory. Sadly when you look at the church in America today it appears many of his fears have been realized. I echo the voice of Martin Luther King and call Christians too be too God-intoxicated to be intimidated and to recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church. Let the church in America be the thermostat again, let it set the standards for morality and lifestyle instead of conforming to the standard a godless society dictates to it. Rise up o church!